the time to make it all out, be shown to be the sufficient basis for a belief in, and a logical ground for anticipating, the progress of man toward moral and spiritual perfection. A healthy man is an optimist. Pessimism is the product of dyspepsia; and all the intermediate phases of philosophy come from some want of normal brain-action. Following out the Darwinian theory, — supported as it seems to be by the facts,

one must believe that the human race as a whole is improving in bodily development; that the results of what we call civilization are, increase of symmetry in the growth of the human body, diminution of disease, greater perfection in the power of the senses, in short, a gradual progress toward a healthy body. Now, a healthy body brings with it a healthy mind. The two cannot be separated. Whatever brings the one will bring the other; whatever impairs the one will impair the other. A sound mind must bring, in time, a sound moral nature; and all, together, will tend toward the perfection of humanity in the development of his spiritual affinities. Such has been, roughly sketched, my belief regarding the progress of man. It has left all the men of the past ages, all of the present time, all of many generations yet to come, in a condition, which, compared with that which I try to foresee, must be called very immature. This has never been a stumbling-block to me; for I hold that the Lord understands his own work, the end from the beginning; and that, if "order is heaven's first law," there is a place for every soul that is in it, and a possible satisfaction of the desires of every one. Dr. Clarke expresses the thought that, however much any being may have gone astray, the soul reconciled at last to God, though

came,

it can never undo the past, or be at that point it might have reached, will yet be perfectly content with its place in the universe, and as much blessed as the archangels. That consideration has satisfied my mind when I contemplated humanity, seeming to stop so far short of its perfection. My regrets -if I can use such a termas I believed, out of my ignorance. Now comes a book which claims to give us the key of the whole problem of human destiny- a book containing some assertions regarding occult science, belief in which must remain suspended in our minds, and some points in cosmogony which conflict with our Christian convictions—yet a book making statements about human history which, though in the highest degree startling, are not contradicted by anything we know of the past, but are rather an explanation of some of its dark passages

a book developing a system of human growth which cannot be disproved and which makes plain some of the riddles of destiny.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is its tremendous assumption. "All that have hitherto written on this subject have been only halftaught. They have not been admitted to the real inner doctrine. Here is the first putting-forth, to the world, of the real teaching, as the Buddhists present it to those who have been initiated into occult science." Such is, in substance, the author's claim. We may believe just as much of this as we can. I, for my part, knowing nothing about the matter, choose, just now, and for our purpose, to assume that the doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism are what Sinnett says they are, because they suggest to my mind so many attractive avenues for my imagination to wander in.

There are two main points in this book which give it its chief interest: (1) "The past history of the human race as now living on this planet ;" and (2) "The manner in which, and the circumstances under which, any individual man works out his own salvation." But before entering upon these, we should say a word about the Buddhist statements regarding the nature of man.

Seven is the sacred number in the Buddhist system. As there are seven worlds in the planetary chain, seven kingdoms in Nature, seven root-races of men, in like manner man is a sevenfold being, continuing, through untold millions of years, his existence as an individual, yet changing, one knows not how many times, many of his component elements. As the Buddhist sees the mortal body to be dissolved into its molecules, and these molecules to be transferred with their inherent vitality to other organisms, so some of his higher elements, among them them his "astral body," his impulses and desires, under the name, as our author gives it, of animal soul, may separate from the more enduring parts of his composition, and become lost to him in Nature's great store of material substance. As there is an animal soul, the seat of those faculties which we possess in common with the lower beings about us, so there is a human soul, the seat of intelligence; and, higher still, a spiritual soul, possessing powers of which as yet we know but little, yet destined to give us, when it shall be more fully developed, new powers of sense, new avenues for the entrance of knowledge, by which we shall be able to communicate directly with Nature, and become as much greater than the present race of men,

as that is greater than the lowest brutes. Above all these elements of man, controlling all, and preserving its individuality throughout, is "spirit." Yet even this, when absorbed into Nirvana, is lost in that great whole which includes all things and is Nature herself. Lost, do I say?—yes, lost for inconceivable ages upon ages, yet destined to come forth again at some moment in eternity, and to begin its round through the everlasting cycle of evolution.

Here, you will say, is materialism. As the intelligent man of early ages looked out upon the world, he felt the wind he could not see, he smelt the odor that he could not feel, and he reasoned with himself, I think, as follows: "There is somewhat too subtile for these bodily senses to grasp it. Something of which I cannot directly take cognizance brings to me the light of sun and stars." These somethings were, in his conception, forms of matter. He saw the intelligence and the moral worth of his friend, and then he saw that friend a lifeless body stretched upon the ground, and he said some thing is gone. This thing was again to him only another and more subtile form of matter. We, with all the aids of modern knowledge and thought, are absolutely unable to say what distinction there is between matter and spirit. The old philosopher was logical. He could find no point at which to draw his line. Therefore he drew no line. He recognized only different manifestations of one substance. In terms of our language, he was a materialist. is the modern scientist; yet I cannot help thinking that the Buddhist stands much nearer to truth than the materialist of to-day. The various faculties of human sense and human intellect are

So

past an oblivion from which it returns only on its approach to Nirvana and waits the moment for reincarnation. Yet it comes not again to conscious life, unaffected by the forgotten past. Karma, the resultant of its upward or downward tendencies, which has been accumulating through all the course of its existence, remains; and the new-born man comes into visible being with good or evil propensities, the balance of which is to be affected by the struggles of one more mortal phase of existence. Thus we go on through one life after another, each time a new person yet the same human soul, ignorant of our own past lives, yet never free from their influence upon our character, exactly as in mature life we have absolutely forgotton what happened to us in our infancy, yet are never free from its influence. In Devachan, which corresponds, says our author, to what in other religions is the final and eternal heaven, we receive, from time to time, the reward of our deeds done in the body, yet still pass on with all our upward or downward tendencies until, many millions of years in the future, during our next passage through life on this planet, we shall come to the crisis in our existence which shall determine whether we are to become gods or demons.

Let me now turn back the page of history. A little more than one million years ago this earth was covered, as now, with vegetable forms, and was the dwelling of animals, as numerous, perhaps, and as various as now; but there was no humanity. The time was come when man, who had passed already three times round the planetary chain, and was nearly half way through his fourth round, should again make his appearance on the scene. Nature

works only in her own way, and that way is uniform. The first man must be born of parents already living. As there are no human parents, he must be born of lower animals, and of those lower animals most nearly resembling the coming human animal. Darwin has told us what the animal was, yet the new being was a man and not an ape, because, in addition to its animal soul, it was possessed also of a human soul. We all know that man is an animal. Those modern students of science, who affirm that that is the whole truth of human nature, take a lower view of their own being than the Indian philosophers. Man is an animal plus a human and a spiritual soul.

Behold, now, the earth peopled by man. Through seven races must he pass, each with its various branches. Yet these races are not contemporaneous; for Nature is in no hurry. One race comes forward at a time, reaches the height of its possibility, then passes away during great physical transformations, and leaves but a wreck behind to live, and witness, in some new part of earth, the coming of another race. These races and branchraces and sub-branch races are to be animated by the same identical souls. Hence, one race at a time; at first, even, one sub-race only, for the next is to be of a higher order. After each root-race has run its course, the earth has always been prepared by a great geological convulsion for the next. In this convulsion has perished all that makes up what we call civilization, yet not all men then living. Since some souls are slower than others, all are not ready to pass into the second race, when the time for that race has come. Hence fragments of old races survive, kept up for a time by the incarnation